


Change The World

by GoneGravitas (AntiGravitas)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Slight Canon Divergence, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25597678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiGravitas/pseuds/GoneGravitas
Summary: Down in the depths of the underground research lab, Cloud finds someone else before he finds his friends.Takes place during Ch.13.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23
Collections: FF7 Fanworks Exchange '20





	Change The World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SethSuffers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SethSuffers/gifts).



> This was such a fun prompt, I hope you enjoy! :]
> 
> This is set during the events of Ch. 13, during the time where you have control of Barret.

Falling seems to be the one thing Cloud Strife is unquestionably good at these days.

He hits the ground hard, and it’s only a mixture of training, SOLDIER conditioning, and sheer blind luck that stops him breaking a leg. Once the dust has settled and he’s shoved the sheet metal and cracked concrete debris off himself, he climbs warily to his feet, stretching limbs to check for problems and scanning the gloom for threats. With a SOLDIER’s low light vision he takes in the steel and uniformity of the place and recognises it at once as yet more Shinra lab. 

_Just a lower level of hell,_ he thinks to himself grimly, and picks a direction to start walking.

Built to a rigid template there’s still a knack to successfully negotiating Shinra layouts, and perhaps if Cloud wasn’t in such a foul mood he’d be doing better at it. But there’s a buzz in his head and an ache behind his eyes that won’t go away, and this place smells like home in some kind of nightmare way that itches below the surface of his mind. Something like a song he can’t remember the words to no matter how hard he tries.

He’s been down here nearly an hour the first time he stumbles into a laboratory. A low tremor has just finished shaking dust from the minute cracks in the ceiling, and then the lights of the section flicker once and abruptly die. He pauses for a moment in the gloom until his eyes adjust, and even then it takes his brain a moment to make sense of what he’s seeing. 

Tall, curved cabinets line the walls, all of them glass-walled and empty, and it’s only because of that innocuous detail that it takes him so long to work out what they are. Not cabinets - _tanks._ The kind of thing you grow other things inside. There’s a pair of stainless steel workbenches at the far end of the room, each one of them fitted with two pairs of restraints, each lying spotless and empty. Cloud stares for a long moment at the manacles, then blinks and takes his leave, pulling the door closed behind him.

He worked for Shinra long enough to know what they are, and what they do. SOLDIERs like him come from labs like that. Strength and power don’t come for free, certainly not the Mako-enhanced kind. In the dim emergency lighting of the corridor Cloud stops, head swimming, and for a second has to just stand still in the gloom, one hand pressed against the wall to steady his balance.

 _This damned place,_ he thinks to himself. _This damned company._

He falls for the second time that day with no ominous rumble of warning, and no threatening lurch of the gangway beneath his boots. Except this time it’s not so far and he gets his feet under him before he lands, hitting the ground square with all the cat-like balance of his kind. Still the ceiling sheets plaster-dust and debris down around his head for several long moments, pinging off the Buster Sword until the torrent of masonry eases to a gentle patter. 

He finds himself in a long, dimly lit corridor, and it’s not until he takes in the reinforced walls, thick with steel plating, that the twisting in his head kicks in again. It’s not so much that it hurts. It’s more like being shoved violently sideways from the inside of his skull, leaving him off-balance and filled with sense memories. _The low muted murmur of unrecognisable voices from far away, heard as though through an encasing cocoon of liquid and glass. A brilliant green light that permeates everything, and the whisper of his name in shocking clarity. He knows_ that _voice-_

The ceiling creaks ominously and a warning patter of plaster sifts down around his shoulders. The devastation of above is mirrored in real time below in this forgotten place, the touch of Shinra contaminating everything. As above, so below, and likewise this is no place to linger.

Spitting dust and grit from his mouth, Cloud pushes on. 

  
  


*

  
  


It’s not the voices that tell him to open the door and go inside. There’s no spooky grey-cowled entity to entice him and certainly no silver-haired giant to lead him on. He’s just bored. Bored of the long, steel-grey corridors and the collapsed shafts that block his way, and tired of finding ceiling hatches that won’t budge beneath the weight of the fallen masonry above. Cloud goes into the laboratory because _why not?_ and the moment he does it he regrets it.

His headache spikes with a sharpness that makes him clutch at his skull, wincing out loud, and for two long seconds there’s a buzzing like the thrum of a high-voltage power cable in his head. It’s so strong it feels like it’s rattling the very bones in his jaw and he pulls in a sharp, shocked breath through gritted teeth. And then as suddenly as that it’s gone again.

Cloud looks around, blinking in the dim green luminescence and realises that the glow is coming from behind a large glass observation panel in the far side of the room. For just a second he hesitates, because he’s already been down here long enough that Tifa and Barret could have gotten themselves into any number of bad situations, but then curiosity, and a strange, unwelcome dread pushes up inside his chest. It’s enough to lift his feet and take him across the room to peer through the window. 

The room beyond contains a single mako tank, its gentle rippling casting the steel flooring into an almost peaceful play of green and shadow. The breath catches in Cloud’s throat, and for a second he hears the humming in his head again. Not the electric spark of whatever had hit when he’d walked through the door, but the angry roar of an adrenaline spike. 

_Get a grip,_ he tells himself. _You’ve seen these things a hundred times before._

But not like this. Not from outside looking in and for just a second he has to pause again, to fight off the discordance of a memory that tells him what it looks like to see out from _behind_ the glass- but of course he knows what it looks like. SOLDIERS get hurt sometimes and that’s how you heal a deeply injured warrior, when there’s no other hope for them. Except, he’s never been that badly inju-

Cloud almost leaps out of his skin when a palm slams up against the inside of the glass tank. Something, no, some _one_ is in there.

He’s through the reinforced steel door that seals off the lab and up close to the tank before he’s even thought the action through. Something compels him forward, an urgency he doesn’t stop to process and doesn’t pause to question. That person needs _help,_ Zack needs- no. Frustrated - now is not the time for these messed up mental slips - he turns to the console next to the tank. It’s a simple affair, the main station secure behind the reinforced glass. This is just an emergency release, another careful Shinra protocol whose efficiency Cloud can be glad of just this one time. With the certainty of his training he finds the emergency release and slams it home.

There’s no blare of warning sirens and that alone should give enough of an indication of who owns this particular lab to be a warning in itself. The mako simply drops out as though a hatch has opened in the bottom of the tank, leaving the man inside slumped bonelessly in his tank harness. Cloud hits the door release without hesitation, knowing that those few moments after the mako drains are some of the worst. The heaviness, the disorientation, the learning to breathe again, it’s all- he shoves the thoughts away, he has no idea what he’s talking about.

The man is tall and his hair is dark with mako. Cloud puts a hand flat to his shoulder to support him as he takes a struggling breath, and the man’s chin snaps up at the contact. Eyes, mako eyes, a sky blue so vivid they’re extreme even for a SOLDIER and Cloud freezes, shot through with surprise. Except no, these eyes are far greener and this face is, this is, it can’t be.

_Genesis._

*

With the antidote drained the man lets his head fall back, and the empty glass vial clinks as he tosses it to one side. The aftereffects of mako-immersion can’t be taken care of with a single ampul of anti-poison, but in Cloud’s experience it will go some way to helping with the nausea. He kneels now at the man’s side, wary and caught on the knife-edge of indecision.

_Genesis Rhapsodos._

He knows him without doubt, without hesitation. Even lacking the trademark coat and dressed only in the basic uniform staples it’s unquestionably him. Cloud’s memories may be a jumble of conflicting images, a mixed-up scatter of papers thrown into disarray by the storm of mako poisoning, but even if he can’t quite bring it all into focus there’s one thing he’s certain of. This is Genesis Rhapsodos, SOLDIER First Class, missing in action, presumed dead. Considered a traitor to Shinra, to everything the company stands for, and-

He doesn’t- the thread of the reasoning gets tangled somewhere around Banora, no Wutai- and there’s the sudden flare of a sable dark wing- _who exactly is the Hero here, do you think? -_ and he doesn’t remember. He just does not remember.

“What year is it?”

Genesis’ voice is low and made raspy by disuse. Cloud blinks, _how long_ has _it been?_ and then answers. He watches as the SOLDIER’s eyes drift closed, and hears the soft sigh of his breath. This man, it’s his duty to turn him in, but no- Cloud’s ex-SOLDIER now, and so is this guy, for all his fame. They worked together once. They-

“You’re a SOLDIER.”

The words are careful, and Genesis is looking at him sideways, a slow look up and down that takes in the uniform and lingers a moment too long on the sword slung across his back. 

“ _Ex-_ SOLDIER,” Cloud corrects him. He notes the narrowing of the other man’s eyes, just the tiniest reaction, so small it’s probably inadvertent. He can read the caution and the confusion in him, can sense him trying to work out what threat Cloud is likely to be. He has good reason to be careful, Cloud thinks.

“Ex...” Genesis breathes. Then he laughs softly, as though this is something bitter and wonderfully amusing. “That’s poetry for you.”

“You’re Genesis,” Cloud says.

That elicits a turn of the head and another narrowing of the man’s eyes. “Do I know you?”

“I’m Cloud Strife, SOLDIER First Class.”

“Oh. ...Yes.” Genesis pauses, and even though he clearly tries it’s hard for him to entirely conceal his confusion. “I know you…” 

There’s something careful to those words and an expression in his eyes that Cloud can’t quite read. He chooses to believe it’s just the lingering confusion of mako poisoning, or perhaps caution in the face of an unknown threat, but Cloud is a long way past being loyal to Shinra now and could tell him outright that he doesn’t need to worry about anything like that. 

After the extended mako immersion he’s received Cloud isn’t particularly surprised by Genesis’ lack of memories. He knows only too well the confusion and disarray the tanks can leave a mind in, and he suspects right now Genesis is putting his all into simply keeping himself coherent. 

“Give it time, you’ll feel better soon,” he says. 

Even a SOLIDER First Class needs a minute or two to come back from a mako bath that’s lasted, how long? Cloud isn’t sure he wants to know. Something about it sends a shiver through him, and he frowns. He’s about to ask if the other man can get up yet when there’s another sinister groan and he feels the rumble through his feet of architecture stressed beyond its acceptable load bearing limits. Both men look up as a fine stream of dust spills down from between the ceiling plates. 

“What’s happened?” Genesis asks, and although he doesn’t say it out loud, Cloud can hear the _now_ tagged on the end of that sentence.

“Shinra brought the plate down. We need to get out of here.”

To his credit, or perhaps the credit of his training, Genesis doesn’t question this. Instead he takes the hand that Cloud offers him and pushes himself to his feet. There’s a strength to his grip and an ease to his movements that takes Cloud a little by surprise. He keeps his face carefully blank at the discovery. If Genesis feels the need to conceal his true rate of recovery, well, Cloud can’t really hold that against him. Shinra doesn’t exactly breed blind trust into its SOLDIERs.

It’s Genesis that sees the cowled figure first. Cloud reads the sudden tension in his muscles and is already turning as the other man’s eyes begin to narrow. The ghostly creature hangs in the air on the other side of the viewing window, and the dark faceless depths inside its ragged cowl send the same chill up Cloud’s spine as they always do. 

“You again,” he snarls.

Genesis tuts and rolls his shoulders, stretching the muscles. “Pay no mind to it,” he says dismissively, and the certainty in his voice brings Cloud up short.

“You know what they are?” he asks curiously.

“One might call them the peanut gallery,” Genesis drawls in reply. He runs a hand through his slick hair and flicks the mako from his fingertips. “They’re nothing but hecklers. Let’s leave. Now.”

Cloud nods and reaches for the hilt of his sword. Before his fingers can even make contact the grey cowled ghost is gone in a swirl of dust that fades quickly away to nothing. 

Genesis snorts derisively. “I know the way out.”

“There’s a lot of collapsed corridors,” Cloud warns him.

“Then we’ll cut our way out,” Genesis replies. He’s already heading for the door, his bare feet leaving wet footprints across the steel grilles. Both unarmed and unarmoured, and still limping with the stiffness of an extended stay in the tanks, he trails the reek of mako behind him. He may be SOLDIER but he’s going to need time to get over that, Cloud thinks. As interesting as it would be to fight alongside another First Class again, perhaps it’s better if Genesis heads for the surface while Cloud continues on. At least that's what Cloud tells himself. His mind shies away from the idea of introducing this man to Tifa, or to Barret. The thought of it turns the corners of his mouth down, an unwillingness he'd not expected welling up inside, stubborn and inexplicable. The certainty that it would not go well feels indisputable, and a strange protectiveness makes him hesitate to even mention the two of them. Still, if Genesis knows a way out then perhaps it's one Cloud can lead the others back to - once he's found them.

“I have friends down here. I need to find them.”

“More ex-SOLDIERs?” Genesis turns a penetrating eye on him, and Cloud resists the urge to snort in grim amusement. 

“No,” he replies, refusing to be drawn.

Almost to his surprise Genesis lets it rest. Either he’s so overconfident that he thinks whoever Cloud has with him won’t pose any kind of threat to a SOLDIER, or he’s desperate enough not to rock the boat. Right now Cloud’s not entirely sure which it is.

They make their way back out into the corridors in silence, Genesis sparing not a single glance round at his prison as they leave. Once back amongst the warren of passageways he tilts his head as though listening. “Describe to me where you fell from,” he orders.

And so Cloud does. He doesn’t offer up the reason why he’s ended up down here, or what an ex-SOLDIER is even doing creeping around a secret Shinra laboratory in the first place, because there’s still an ache in his head and a strange disjointed static in his thoughts, like a record that keeps on skipping, never able to play the full tune. Genesis went rogue. Genesis is a traitor. He and the others were sent to bring him back: alive acceptable, dead understandable. 

Except Cloud knows so much more now. Cloud is on the other side of the fence too, at least he’d thought he was. And yet here they both are, right back in the dungeons of the company they’d tried so hard to leave behind. To some extent there’s an inevitability to it, even if their reactions had been almost the opposite of one another. Genesis had fled as far away as he could, but to Cloud Shinra is a poison that’s seeped through every layer of Midgar, and so as far as he’s concerned you may as well dig in and threaten it right back.

Genesis leads them both through the maze of service corridors, echoing storage rooms and empty labs, and with every step he takes he becomes visibly stronger. Cloud makes note of this with caution of his own - Genesis has clearly remembered him now and will know him for the threat he is. Cloud feels like he should say something, explain himself maybe, but that carries with it the risk of Genesis asking to stick around, and that is _definitely_ not what Cloud wants. Too many complications. Too many ties. Too many people that might get hurt.

They encounter their first and only beast just as they’re climbing the side of a metal platform whose stairs have been knocked out by a section of fallen steel piping. It’s a huge, snorting thing of bunched muscle and great curving horns, and it’s waiting to charge them when they clamber over the edge of the next level up. Genesis dives to the side and Cloud meets the beast’s rush head-on, setting his feet firmly and letting it slam itself into the unyielding surface of the Buster Sword. It bounces backwards, snorting blood and bellowing in animal surprise at meeting something that can match its strength. 

Had Cloud expected to be the one left to take care of the beast due to Genesis’ lack of a weapon, he would have been disappointed. Even lacking his sword, Genesis is more than capable of summoning the fire that had made his fighting style so famous back in the day. Cloud has heard of this technique, seen it first hand even - _hadn’t he?_ \- but even so it still takes him by surprise. Every SOLDIER First Class is unique in his abilities, and Genesis is no exception. The casting of magic without materia, even if it is limited in its scope and control, is apparently one of his personal specialities. 

The beast dies in a blistering barrage of whirling fire and the final, clean slice of Cloud’s sword. Afterwards they regard one another over the creature’s carcass, and there’s something different in Genesis’ gaze now, a new depth of acknowledgement that Cloud chooses to read as respect, even if at first he thinks it closer to curiosity. He twirls his sword to rid it of the creature’s blood, then sheathes it between his shoulder-blades, noting how Genesis watches him do it with narrowed eyes. He is, Cloud thinks suddenly, a remarkably striking man.

Then a smile, as though he’s amused by his own thoughts, lifts the corner of Genesis’ mouth and he inclines his head in regal acknowledgement of Cloud’s contribution. Cloud returns the gesture with a single curt nod, and then once more they go on their way. 

  
  


*

  
  
“What do you want from this world, Cloud?”

The question seems to come out of nowhere, and Cloud, lost in the rising anxiety of having spent too long down here already nearly doesn’t hear it. He’s thinking of Tifa and Barret, of how he estimates that he must have fallen further than either of them from the angles of their descent, and the way he’d slammed down through a pair of great open spaces before hitting something solid enough to resist his impact. It’s possible their survival chances will have been increased by that. He gives the question very little thought, snapping back his standard response.

“To get paid.”

Genesis gives him a strange, almost unreadable sideways look, and Cloud thinks he’s going to say something profound, and likely profoundly irritating.

“Is that so?”

Cloud nods, and to his surprise Genesis doesn’t pry further. 

By the time they reach the ventilation shaft that Genesis tells him will lead up to the surface, Cloud can already see signs of gunfire. Enormous bullet holes pockmark the walls and there’s the sweet metallic scent of mako on the air. The corpses of lesser Shinra experiments litter the floor in unpleasant heaps and Cloud’s lips thin into a hard line. At least Barret was alive enough to make this mess.

“Up here,” Genesis informs him, and Cloud squints upwards into the darkness of the ventilation shaft. It would take a SOLDIER’s strength to climb all that way without a ladder. He could make it, but neither Tifa nor Barret could. In fact they’d be hard-pressed to fit the big man’s muscular bulk in there in the first place. 

Genesis reaches up to grip the edges of the hatchway and makes to haul himself up. Cloud frowns. He should, by all rights, make some attempt to stop him. No-one knows what the hell Genesis had been trying to do back before everything had gone to crap, if he’d been a traitor or just foolish. With all he knows now, Cloud’s not sure that it was either. 

“I can’t,” he says.

That gives Genesis pause. For a second the SOLDIER’s eyes rove over him, looking for injury, then he seems to recall what Cloud had told him earlier about friends. He lets one hand fall from the edge, tilting his head to regard him with an intensity that Cloud doesn’t quite know what to do with.

“Well then, Cloud Strife, _ex-_ SOLDIER First Class, this is where our paths must diverge. Good luck, and may the gods send you all the fortune your heart desires.” 

Coming from him, phrased in that way, in that tone, the words seem somehow incredibly hollow, as though somehow, somewhere, Genesis feels that Cloud has taken a wrong turn. A _disappointing_ turn. 

His mental image of the man sparks without warning, fractures, and suddenly Cloud remembers with piercing clarity. _Genesis has always been dangerously arrogant. Not arrogant as Sephiroth is - cold, aloof, implacable, self-satisfied like a cat - but fury barely contained, expressed in sarcasm and poetry, and a fire that burns as bright as the rage to succeed that he holds inside himself-_ I think I liked you, once, Cloud thinks, and blinks. I think I thought well of you.

“What is it that _you_ want?” he asks.

Genesis smiles, and for just a moment there's something strange, something jarring there, but then it's gone like so much smoke.

“To change the world, Cloud.” 

The smile that Genesis gives him, and the soft, almost mocking tone of his answer will stay with Cloud for a very long time. With a lazy salute of farewell, Genesis turns his attention back to the ventilation shaft, and with the lithe grace possessed only by a First Class, leaps up and into the darkness beyond. He disappears into the shadows, and for several minutes longer than he intends to Cloud listens to him climb. Despite the length of the shaft the sounds of the other man’s progress disappear long before they ought to, leaving him straining to hear anything at all. 

Cloud tilts his head, listening, but there’s nothing except the sub-sonic hum of an extraction fan, and in the far distance, the repetitive sound of gatling fire. He is alone again in the deepest heart of Shinra’s twisted vision. And yet for one strange moment, here amongst the sterile metal and monstrous blandness of the testing facility, he thinks he catches the scent of apples. 

Cloud shakes his head and goes to follow the sound of gunfire.

*

Much, much later in yet another soulless Shinra laboratory, Aerith will look up at him and although he won’t quite be able to read the emotion in her eyes, he’ll think it somewhere between sadness and concern. 

“We can change things,” he’ll promise her.

She will hesitate, and then, in that soft, sweet voice of hers, she will say, “Yes, things have certainly changed.”


End file.
